


rest your weary head

by EllisLuie



Series: love is loud(er) [6]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Pre-Canon, Protective Ben Hargreeves, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, implied/referenced suicidal ideation, the others actually help Klaus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:36:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26232037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllisLuie/pseuds/EllisLuie
Summary: Seeing their family again was strange.akaBen misses his siblings. Klaus needs (and gets) help.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: love is loud(er) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807864
Comments: 45
Kudos: 271





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this will be another alternating POV fic, each chapter switching between Ben and Klaus. Also, there might be some time jumps between chapters. This one takes place shortly after the last fic, so Klaus has been staying at Vanya's for maybe a week or two.

Seeing their siblings again was harder than Ben had imagined it would be.

He’d kept up with their lives over the years as much as he could, so they weren’t total strangers to him like they were for Klaus, but when he’d seen them before it had always been with a step removed. They hadn’t known he was there, and he had made peace with that years ago through necessity, but they also hadn’t been around each other, so they were individuals living their lives, not family, and Ben had been resigned to thinking that was the best the afterlife could offer.

Over the years, he had begged Klaus to visit their brothers or sisters, any of them, just so Ben could live vicariously through him during that family reunion, regardless of how much of a disaster it would surely end up being. In the beginning, Klaus had been more likely to give in, if only because Ben had learned early on to play the dead card as much as he could, as guilt seemed to be one of Klaus’s main motivations in life. The subsequent meetings between Klaus and Diego had generally left something to be desired, but Ben had still revelled in every moment.

Then Klaus had started taking heavier drugs and become inured to Ben’s inherent tragedy, so it got harder to convince him to reach out. By then Klaus had pretty thoroughly strained every relationship in his life to its breaking point, including his tie with Ben.

There had been many times where Ben had wondered why he bothered to stick around. He had no answer for why he had shown up at Klaus’s side at his own funeral, and even less of an idea of whether there was any other option, but he knew from experience and practice that he was capable of leaving and travelling at will. But where would he go? 

Klaus’s addictions kept most other ghosts at bay, but on the occasions where Ben struck out on his own, sometimes he would cross an invisible boundary, presumably when he reached the extent of Klaus’s reach, and he would start to see them. He didn’t like what he saw. Mindless, feral, and barely human, stuck in their misery, Ben never wanted to end up like them.

So he stayed with Klaus through every overdose, every prison sentence, every insult and argument, because he didn’t know what he would become without his brother and he knew full well that Klaus would fracture completely without the anchor his presence provided. 

It didn’t make it any easier to watch the things Klaus did to himself and let others do to him through sheer apathy and lack of self-respect, but it did give Ben a purpose.

Initially, when Ben had first realized that the drugs were losing their potency in blocking Klaus’s powers, he had been vindictively pleased. He’d been trying to get Klaus at least semi-sober since they were fourteen, and his failure had always been a sore point between them. It had seemed only fair for the universe to force Klaus to drop his worst habits, and Ben had been all for it.

Until it started getting bad, anyway. Distantly, Ben had known all along that losing the drugs as an escape method would come close to destroying Klaus, because his brother had been high since they were fourteen and was just as afraid of his powers now as he was then. But the concern had been buried under his relief because he had been so convinced that Klaus would be reasonable for once in his life and readily accept that the drugs weren’t working. He would get clean then and there, apologize to Ben for all the babysitting he had had to do, and actually build a life for himself that Ben could be a part of. Maybe, if Ben dared to be so optimistic, they would even reconnect with their family.

Obviously, that hadn’t happened. Instead, as with most things involving his brother, things had gone so badly Ben could hardly believe it. It was almost a talent how good Klaus was at blowing all expectations out of the water, except none of the expectations were ever positive. Klaus was disaster and chaos incarnate, and Ben should have realized that before letting things get so far.

(Ben and guilt had a complicated relationship. He couldn’t exactly do much as a dead man, but that just made the things he did do that much more significant, particularly when it backfired and resulted in his brother permanently disfiguring his own face and coming so close to losing it entirely that it took the whole force of the shattered Umbrella Academy to bring him back from the edge. 

Because Ben had wanted Klaus to stop taking the drugs and hadn’t cared how it happened until it was too late to take back.)

Anyway. Seeing their siblings again was strange.

He was conflicted because, on the one hand, it was everything Ben had wanted since he’d died - the chance to see his family together again, even if he couldn’t be a part of them - while on the other hand, he knew immediately what it was Klaus was doing. It was his farewell tour. Ben didn’t know if it was an entirely conscious choice on his brother’s part, as they never spoke of it, but it seemed obvious to him, if only because he’d had a front-row seat to every aspect of Klaus’s life since they were seventeen. In some ways, Ben could anticipate Klaus’s response to things better than his brother himself could.

Watching Klaus gradually come apart at the seams while being largely unable to prevent it wasn’t, technically, anything new. Klaus had been spiralling ever since Ben’s funeral (maybe even since that last dinner with Five. Or since they were eight and first started individual training), and they’d both known his lifestyle wasn’t sustainable. 

Hell, the countdown had felt so tangible that Ben had demanded that promise out of Klaus years ago. If - when - Klaus died, at least he wouldn’t really be gone, not for Ben. Potentially being stuck on earth with literally no one alive to interact with was far from ideal, but at the very least they’d still have each other. All of eternity to get on each others’ nerves.

However, Ben wasn’t exactly in a hurry to reach that point. Which was what made it so hard to watch as Klaus slowly reintroduced each sibling into their lives, all the while with the inevitable end looming over them.

Still, despite it all, Ben did genuinely enjoy seeing them again. Diego, Luther, Allison - they hadn’t known Ben was there and they’d remained frustratingly blind towards some of the red flags Ben thought was obvious in their brother, but they were family. And Ben enjoyed being around them just as much as Klaus.

Luther going to the moon had thrown everything into a tailspin. Ben was still furious at himself for his own mistakes, for not keeping a better eye on his compromised and traumatized brother, and for being completely and utterly useless to stop the resulting disasters as they unfolded, one after another. Ben couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that deeply terrified, except maybe when he’d been forced to watch Klaus mutilate himself out of drug-induced terror. 

Thank god for Vanya.

If she hadn’t shown up when she had, Ben honestly wasn’t sure where he or Klaus would be now. Probably nowhere good. If they’d been really lucky, maybe Diego would have found them, but it was just as likely that Klaus, in a daze, would have ended up hurting himself or returning to the Academy, not necessarily by choice. 

At her apartment, though, with Klaus safe and off the streets for however long she’d have him, Ben was able to breathe freely for the first time in months. 

-

“Do you think he’s lonely up there?” Klaus asked, perched at Vanya’s window. 

Ben leaned forward to look at the moon, even though it was entirely unnecessary. “Probably,” he said. “But you know Luther. He’s always been interested in aviation and space. Lots of things to study on the moon.”

Klaus hummed in agreement. Vanya wouldn’t like that he was smoking inside, but Ben had convinced him to open the window and aim the smoke out as much as he could, and Vanya wouldn’t like him going outside on his own to smoke either, so Ben figured this was a good enough compromise. Ben was just relieved that it was a regular cigarette pinched between Klaus’s fingers and not a joint, though he knew better than to mention that aloud. Klaus got so squirrelly when anyone offered him even a modicum of praise or approval. 

“He didn’t like being at the Academy alone,” Klaus said quietly. “Poor bastard.”

This was dangerous territory, and Ben was no longer completely confident in his ability to talk his brother down if things went south. Klaus’s response to things was unpredictable now, and the cravings were harder to manage when he was sleep-deprived. The ghosts that occasionally paid a visit to Vanya’s apartment didn’t help, either.

“We’ll see him again when he comes back,” Ben said, even though they both knew full well that Luther’s mission had been designed to sustain life in space indefinitely. There was no telling when their brother would set foot on the Earth again. But reminding Klaus of that wasn’t helpful, so Ben tried to stay positive. “And he knows we’re waiting for him down here.”

They didn’t usually talk about Luther much, for various reasons, so he had to tread carefully.

(One day Ben was going to sit down and make Klaus talk to him about what had happened at the Academy after Luther left, but that was not today. He didn’t think either of them were ready or eager to even mention it now, and there was a whole heap of other trauma to deal with besides.)

Klaus finished the cigarette and crushed it in the plate he’d commandeered as an ashtray. It was obvious he was considering just lighting up another one.

“You should get some sleep,” Ben said. Klaus didn’t give any sign of hearing him, but he persisted. “Diego’s coming by in the morning. He’ll probably make you go on one of those stupid health walks again, and you know how shitty those are when you’re tired. Also, he’ll be disappointed and give you another lecture on taking care of yourself.”

That got an eye roll out of Klaus, who looked fondly exasperated, and Ben counted it as a win when Klaus reached out to close the window. 

“I don’t know who he thinks he’s fooling with his ‘random’ visits. No one is just in the area that often. I don’t need a babysitter,” Klaus muttered mutinously. 

This was patently untrue, and Ben, resident Klaus-sitter for the past decade, didn’t even deign it with a response. Growing up, Klaus had needed supervision on the best of days, even more so once he landed on the streets, and now no one really trusted him alone at all, especially Ben. 

(The last time he’d left him alone, he’d come back to find Klaus practically catatonic at the Academy. Now he got anxious whenever Klaus was out of his sight for an extended period of time, which was a problem they were probably going to have to deal with at some point, but not yet.)

“He’s worried about you, dumbass,” Ben said, because they didn’t do emotional honesty in their family. “So are Allison and Vanya. You should talk to them.”

“I do talk to them!” Klaus protested. “I reunited the whole family. Me! I’m the glue keeping all those assholes together.”

He continued to grumble as he stumbled over to the couch, and Ben just listened in faint amusement. Klaus fell onto the couch in a tangle of limbs but remained tense and stiff, which meant he was going to try and fake sleeping again. It usually fooled Vanya, who hadn’t learned to read his bullshit yet, but it wouldn’t work on Diego. 

“Klaus,” Ben said, one part disapproving, two parts reluctant understanding.

Klaus clenched his jaw. “Shut up, Ben. I went, like, five days without sleep that one time in Amsterdam.”

“You also ingested nothing but cocaine and speed. Forgive me if I’m not eager to recreate that.”

Klaus waved his hand dismissively. “Details,” he said. “Hey, maybe if I look pathetic enough Diego will leave me alone tomorrow. I’ll just tell him I want to nap instead.”

Ben didn’t tell him that wouldn’t have a hope of working, but he probably didn’t need to. Klaus knew just as well as he did why Diego had become such a frequent visitor, conveniently at times when Vanya had to be out of the apartment for work or errands, and even if he did agree to leave Klaus to nap, he would stay in the apartment regardless. Diego and their sisters were worried, and with reason.

“The nightmares and ghosts will still be here in the morning,” Ben said instead of any of that. “You still won’t want to sleep.”

“Fuck off,” Klaus said, but it was without any real heat. 

“Go to sleep, Klaus. I’ll make sure the old dead guy downstairs doesn’t pay a visit, and Vanya should be up in a few hours. Then you’ll get to have a _lovely_ day hearing all of Diego’s armchair psychology.”

As he’d hoped, this made Klaus groan loudly. Ben smiled innocently under Klaus’s glare, completely immune through years of exposure.

Finally, Klaus admitted defeat, though he made sure Ben knew he wasn’t happy about it. He pointedly turned to face the back cushions of the couch and wriggled into the pillows, grousing faintly. 

Ben knew Klaus probably wouldn’t get much sleep. It was a familiar pattern and the chances of that changing now were slim to none. But some was better than none, and Ben could at least try and help by standing guard against the other ghosts. There were thankfully few at Vanya’s apartment, which of course was one of the only reasons Klaus agreed to stay, but even the quieter ghosts were sometimes enough to send Klaus into a spiral these days. 

Ben couldn’t do much for his living siblings, but he could at least do this until Vanya woke up and Diego showed up at the door. It still stung that they couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t help the instinctive flare of jealousy towards Klaus, but it was, admittedly, nice to have other people, living people, to help keep an eye on their most troublesome brother.

The road they’d taken to see their siblings again wasn’t necessarily one Ben would ever want to take again, but actually being around their family was something he revelled in every day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please take this before I rewrite it again

Klaus’s nails were orange.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had access to nail polish, (probably back when he spent his days happily bouncing between various medicinal cloud nines) but he knew he hadn’t had  _ orange  _ nails in a very long time. It didn’t generally fit his aesthetic anymore, because no matter what Diego said Klaus worked very hard to cultivate a specific look, and unfortunately  _ Zest to Kill _ no longer made the cut. 

(Also he was pretty sure the brand went out of business years ago. He had no idea where Allison had found the bottle she gave him, and maybe he didn’t want to know. It wasn’t like he would have bought the stuff himself anyway. He was a very big fan of the five-finger discount, especially when his options were either to spend a few dollars on a cheap bottle of nail polish that Ben would roll his eyes at or use the money to smooth talk his way into another baggie of goodies, which would really make Ben roll his eyes. Ah, the good old days.)

He used to have orange nails a lot as a teen, though. Well, orange-ish. There had been orange involved. He’d been an artistic genius, dabbling in whatever colours Allison had been gracious enough to offer for his perusal, and the orange had been a relative staple because Allison had been lame and usually stuck to neutrals, with the orange one of the few bolder colours in her collection. 

It was nice of her to give him a bottle now, mysterious source notwithstanding. 

“You have to stay still,” Vanya huffed, giving his hand a warning tug.

Klaus immediately froze, contrite, pouting at her. She was remarkably impervious to it, though, which was incredibly frustrating since it usually took longer than a few weeks (months? How long had he been crashing here?) for his impeccable charm to lose its potency. Still, she was willingly painting his nails for him, so he ought to at least try and make her life a little easier.

(He wasn’t very good at that.)

Vanya held her tongue between her teeth when she concentrated, which Klaus had never known before. He liked spotting it when she was doing trivial things around the apartment because it was interesting to see what she decided needed that particular level of focus. Pouring tea and hot chocolate was apparently a deeply involved mental task for her, but making food for the two of them wasn’t. Painting orange glitter onto Klaus’s nails warranted the tongue-in-teeth, but playing the violin garnered the opposite effect - it made his sister look relaxed and loose in a way he never saw outside of her practice.

Klaus carefully never mentioned any of these observations out loud, both because it was horrifically creepy and because Ben would never let him live it down.

(Not that Ben didn’t obsessively catalogue all their minute quirks himself. He really had no room to judge, but try telling the dead guy that. Klaus was half-convinced Ben had an entire book he filled with details about Klaus, about his drug use and supposed failings, just so that he could whip it out at a moment’s notice to prove a point.)

(Except Klaus didn’t actually think that, because that wasn’t Ben’s  _ modus operandi _ . That particular trait was more their father’s purview, but Klaus made a point not to think about him because that led to bad things and bare feet and suddenly blinking in front of sisters on the side of roads - )

“Vanya’s done,” Ben said quietly. He didn’t look up from his book, but he did incline his head when Klaus twitched a little. 

Hurriedly, Klaus pulled out his biggest smile and wiggled his fingers. Vanya was indeed done, watching him carefully as she capped the bottle of nail polish. They’d learned the hard way that Klaus tended to make a mess when he handled clean up, because his concentration was shot and his hands shaky, so Vanya generally took point on that.

“Ah,  _ wunderbar! _ Many thanks, sister dear, a thousand gratitudes,” Klaus said, studying his nails. “Have you considered dropping this orchestra business and taking up cosmetology?”

Vanya’s lips thinned, but Klaus was pretty sure that was her version of an amused smile, so he wasn’t too worried. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said dryly, gesturing to the nail polish on her palms and splotched around the tips of Klaus’s fingers. 

“Nonsense!” Klaus said. “It all takes practice, Vanny, and I am willing to be your humble test subject.”

“Of the three of us, she probably does the best job,” Ben agreed absently, still reading.

Klaus considered. Vanya’s work was a little sloppy, but overall there was orange paint on his nails, none on the couch, and still a good amount in the bottle itself. A roaring success on all accounts. Klaus had more experience, but they’d quickly realized after a few fingers that that practice meant next to nothing when he could barely focus long enough to remember he was holding the nail polish and was more likely to spill it completely. And Ben was dead. Ghosts, unfortunately, had no need or interest in beauty, apparently, even if they could use nail polish.

(They couldn’t, though. Klaus couldn’t let them, wouldn’t let them, not even Ben, not even for their siblings, because he tried before and it went badly and no number of dead brothers or living siblings were enough to make him try again.)

Klaus couldn’t remember if  _ Zest to Kill  _ had always been so sparkly. 

He amused himself by wiggling his fingers in the light as Vanya left to put away the nail polish and do whatever Vanya-like things she had planned for the rest of the day. Diego was going to be stopping by later, which was tediously normal at this point, and meant at least one more round of awkward questions and staring that Diego probably thought made him look concerned but really just made him look constipated and pissed. Exhausting.

However, if Klaus played his cards right, he could get Diego to agree to lunch out somewhere. Get out of the apartment, make Diego buy him dinner, and hopefully ignore the ghosts once they weren’t trapped in a confined space together. The makings of a decent enough day. If he was really lucky, he could force Diego to compliment his nails.

Klaus was distracted from watching the mini-disco lights of his nails when a set of headphones appeared in front of his face. It took a second to register, a flare of panic firing through him at suddenly  _ seeing  _ something, but he clamped it down and gingerly took what he slowly recognized as the headphones Diego had bought him months ago. He looked at Vanya in askance.

She shifted uneasily, unsure of herself still in her own home (his fault, he took away her safe space because he messed up and got in the way), but shrugged a little.

“You get twitchy,” she said. “When it’s - loud.”

Even Ben looked up from his book at that.

“Oh,” Klaus said softly. “... Thanks, Van.”

She gave him one of her rare genuine smiles before turning away and he took a moment to just stare after her dumbly.

“Well,” Ben said eventually. “Statistically speaking, at least one of our siblings had to have gotten the brain cells of the family. It certainly wasn’t you or Diego.”

Klaus stuck out his tongue at him and popped the headphones on. Ben’s bitchy comments were, thankfully, the last thing he heard a ghost say for several hours until Diego showed up with his usual troop.

-

Klaus’s thoughts were, at best, scattered.

But he at least had practice in navigating everyday life while barely able to form coherent sentences, so it didn’t present much of an obstacle. Yet another tally he was putting under “Pro Drugs”. 

(Ben did not like the tally, but Klaus liked to keep track of the things he missed about the drugs. It helped keep him sane when the cravings were bad and the ghosts were loud and his brothers were unwilling to let him out of their sight. Ben had his own tally for cons. His tally was longer, but he had an unfair advantage.)

So while Klaus lost himself sometimes, he was still, for the most part, functional. A little brain fog was nothing after having experienced a two week bender on a veritable cocktail of unnamed psychedelics in a foreign country with no memory of how he got there or how to get back, even if it did get a little frustrating at times. The drugs were more fun, of course, and Klaus really wished he could blame his current struggles on some kind of trip, but unfortunately, the insubstantial and drifting nature of his thoughts nowadays seemed to be shaping up to be a more permanent thing.

It wasn’t a huge issue, anyway. Now that he was crashing on Vanya’s couch, she was usually around to snap him out of it whenever he got twisted up in himself, and Diego stopped by regularly enough he might as well have staked his own claim on Vanya’s armchair. 

(They were stealing Vanya’s furniture piece by piece, brother by brother. Ben preferred the coffee table and Luther crept through the entire apartment when the stars came out and the window was open. Five had been there before them all and he’d never been there at all.)

Plus, Klaus had a constant translator, interpreter, walking talking puppet master all wrapped up in one convenient ghost. Ben had a sixth sense for knowing when Klaus needed help operating like a normal human being, and only complained a little whenever he had to pull the strings and only for appearance’s sake.

(Sometimes Klaus was tempted to tell Diego and Vanya and Allison that they weren’t talking to him, not really. Number Four checked out of the building a long time ago, was still standing at Reginald’s desk, had never left the streets, and now it was just Ben’s words and Ben’s eyes from Four’s face. They’d traded one brother for another and they didn’t even know.)

(But then he thought of Scrabble and donuts and Allison’s sharp nails, and Ben had looked so stricken when Klaus had shared his thoughts on the matter, so maybe he shouldn’t tell them after all.)

For the first time in a very long time, Klaus’s life wasn’t, as Ben liked to put it, a complete dumpster fire. He was still homeless, still a drug addict, still broken into pieces Krazy Glued together, but he was a person. He had a family who let him sleep on their couches and eat their food, and they didn’t yell at him anymore when he bounced off the walls or crawled in through their window. Well, sometimes Diego still yelled, but he was much more considerate with where he threw his knives, so that was still progress.

It was nothing that Klaus had ever expected, nor necessarily wanted. But it seemed to make Ben happy, and there was a certain comfort in being with their siblings that hadn’t been there before, so it was probably for the best.

Klaus’s only real hangup these days was, of course, the ghosts. They were a constant problem just in general, but he was particularly bothered by his siblings’ ghosts. 

(The cravings, too, but ghosts generally took precedence because they tended to throw tantrums.)

Diego probably had the most ghosts of them all, excluding Ben, who didn’t count because his ghosts had lost interest as soon as the target of their ire kicked the bucket himself. That solution certainly wasn’t an option for Diego, though, so Klaus had to just grit his teeth and try to remember how to be human on bad days.

(Allison had fewer ghosts but they tended to be angrier, bitter over a teenage girl forcibly brainwashing them into killing themselves and their friends. Klaus would go to the grave before he shared any of their vitriol with his superstar sister.)

(Luther’s ghosts rivalled Diego’s, but he probably took them to the moon with him.)

(Vanya had no ghosts. Sometimes Klaus thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, shadows trailing after his smallest sister, but they weren’t real.)

(Klaus had nightmares about Five’s ghost.)

On the bright side, his siblings tended to be more patient with him these days. It was unnerving, but he had to admit it took some of the pressure off when Allison didn’t mind repeating herself and Diego willingly ducked out of the room for a few minutes to give him a breather. (And Vanya apparently knew when he needed extra help distracting himself. Was that why she sometimes stood up to practice violin even when she’d said she was done for the day? He’d thought it was just her being anxious over her performance.) He wasn’t used to his siblings being so aware and accommodating of the ghosts, and it was an adjustment he hadn’t quite completed yet. Luckily, he had Ben to fill in the gaps, even if he was the one ghost his siblings would never know about.

“I’m not really a classical kind of guy,” Diego hedged, poking moodily at his salad. “More metal, rock, you know? Real music.”

Ben scoffed. Klaus followed suit, a beat behind. His attention kept getting caught by the entourage behind them, but Ben made sure to stay close by to draw him back.

“C’mon, Di,” Klaus wheedled. The effort was a little lacklustre, but the intent was there. “It’s little Vanya’s big show! She’s been practicing day and night and I think it would be nice to go and show our support.”

Diego gave a suspicious eye squint. Which, fair. Klaus was still trying out this whole ‘considerate sibling’ thing and it felt a bit alien to him too.

Diego gave an irritated huff, loud and sudden, timing awfully with a ghost at his shoulder yelling obscenities, and suddenly Diego’s face was twisted with rage, haggard and pale, voice rough and painful as he started to shout, angry and hurt and  _ furious  _ because Klaus wasn’t there, he didn’t stop it, and now they were all dead, dead, dead, and it was all his fault, and Diego’s yelling was getting louder and louder, and Klaus wanted it to stop, wanted to stop seeing his siblings’ faces hurt and dead and ghosts but closing his eyes didn’t help so he tried to dig them out - 

Just as suddenly as it started, it was over. Diego’s face smoothed back out to normal and the yelling faded to the usual levels, just the moaning of the real ghosts rather than the accusations of his (not dead, definitely not dead) siblings. 

“Klaus?” Diego said tentatively, confused, concerned.

Klaus’s jaw ached.

“You can help me take pictures of the concert for Ally,” he said instead of  _ please make your ghosts shut up  _ or  _ you’re definitely not dead, right?  _ “I’d make all of them selfies otherwise and she may never speak to me again.”

Diego rolled his eyes. “What, are we parents at a kindergarten talent show? No, man, I’m not doing that.”

“Maybe he’s jealous because we weren’t there to take pictures of him at the police academy,” Ben offered. “Like parents do for their kids’ first day of school.”

“Why would they take pictures of the first day of school?” Klaus asked. “That’s dumb.”

“What?” Diego said, but he was promptly ignored.

“I don’t know, that’s just what normal families do, I guess. Instead of depressing family portraits,” Ben said, lounging across the table and blocking Diego from view. “Might’ve been nice.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Klaus scoffed. “Seven toddlers all dolled up for classes on torture resistance and battle tactics. A sweet photo, really just warms the cockles of my heart.”

Ben scowled at him but didn’t argue the point, so Klaus considered that a victory. It was a bit awkward balancing his hot chocolate and croissant on the edge of the table so that they didn’t find their way into Ben’s shin, but it was worth it to keep his focus away from the ring of ghosts around them. Which was entirely Ben’s goal all along, because he was an obnoxious brat but he knew how Klaus’s head worked.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Diego wondered, though Klaus missed most of it because Ben’s shoulder did not make a good window. Ben was kind enough to repeat it, though, so who needed line of sight? 

“Just about how you’re going to take the best picture for our little family scrapbook,” Klaus said, smiling sweetly. “I’m thinking dramatic lighting and a full photoshoot. Do you think Van will let us rent out one of those fancy cameras?”

Ben shifted in place enough for Klaus to get a glimpse at his living brother. To his relief, Diego stayed very much alive and not the superimposed hallucination from those months ago. Small mercies. Now if only the ghosts would take the hint.

“I’ll take one photo on Al’s shitty camera and call it a day,” Diego said.

“Deal!” Klaus said brightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so turns out classes take up way more of my time than I expected. I've been trying to get this done for weeks and just didn't have time :(


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not mean for this update to take so long, I just got really busy with classes and also this fic has been tumbling around in my brain for too long and has changed directions plot-wise too many times, so. My bad.

Ben was, admittedly, a little frustrated.

He’d never been the most vocal of the Academy, had always kept most of his complaints and fears close to his chest, had rarely given them a voice out of fear of being heard, and so growing up he’d always dealt with his frustration by, well, not. It would build up inside him, a tight little ball of anger and resignation and exhaustion, getting denser and denser until Dad sent him out on a mission and it exploded forth into a horrific mass of extra limbs and death.

(Alternatively, when things were good - if things had ever been good - the little ball of anger would be small enough that Ben would dare to unspool it in the middle of the night, in the dark, with a brother at his side to help keep it harmless and shapeless. Four was best at that unless he was drunk or just back from training, and Two sometimes when he was younger and softer.)

Being dead had changed a lot of things, though, and that included how Ben handled his emotions. He’d had years to practice expressing them more, with Klaus a permanent strain on his self-control, constantly pushing his buttons, testing his boundaries, and Ben had had to learn how to stop that little ball from forming, how to vent before that happened, because there would be no explosion to help take it away now.

So. Ben was frustrated.

A year ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated to express that frustration loudly, emphatically, and often. It was the only way to work through it, to let it all out at once, feel everything in one mighty burst, and then force it to disperse so that he could have a few hours of peace until Klaus did something to wind him up again.

But things had changed.

For one, while Klaus was the current source of his frustration, it wasn’t entirely his _fault_ this time, at least not in the way it would have been months ago, and so he probably didn’t deserve to be the sole recipient of Ben’s frustration. For another, potentially more significant thing, Klaus wasn’t, technically speaking, doing anything wrong, morally, financially, or otherwise. There was also the fact that having a ghost shout at him, or even speak to him with any particularly strong, negatively-coded emotion, would probably send Klaus into some kind of panic attack for which Vanya wouldn’t thank him.

Well, Vanya wouldn’t thank him for anything regardless, since Ben was dead and she had no idea he was there - and while Ben had been tempted, he would never really argue with Klaus about that, at least not for now - but the thought still stood.

Ben worked very hard to regulate his tone.

“You should just tell her,” he said. “I think she’d listen.”

Klaus cracked a single eye open to look at him, and even though only a sliver of green was visible, the doubt was loud and clear. 

“She has to already suspect,” he continued, because Klaus had often accused him of being a bastard and he had never actually denied it. It was, it turned out, far easier to argue with his brother when Klaus was unable to actually answer back. “She found you near the Academy, and you talk in your sleep sometimes. I overheard her on the phone with Allison the other day. They’re probably going to try to talk to you about it. Maybe they’ll bring Diego, too. We haven’t had an intervention in a while.”

Klaus let out a low hiss, but couldn’t really do much more without risking waking Vanya.

“You have to tell _someone_ ,” Ben insisted, some of his exasperation bleeding through, voice getting a little sharper. “You haven’t even spoken to me about it, and it’s been months, Klaus. Please.”

Klaus didn’t like it when Ben said please. It made him sound pathetic, made Klaus feel like an asshole. Frankly, it made them both feel a little off-kilter.

But Ben wasn’t afraid to play dirty.

Klaus firmly closed his eyes again, shutting him out, and Ben sighed. 

“Just think about it,” he said, slinking back. Klaus was stubborn enough to ignore him for the rest of the night, and it was better to let them sleep anyway, so Ben didn’t feel the need to fight it any further. Besides, he could hear the faint sounds of the old guy downstairs coming down the hall, and he wanted to get in the way of him and Vanya’s front door before he got too close. 

(Klaus wouldn’t thank him for the effort in the morning, but he didn’t have to.)

Vanya huffed in her sleep, head turning a little closer into Klaus’s shoulder, and Ben watched as the tension like a live wire in his brother’s body relaxed a little. They’d both be sore in the morning, bodies contorted on the couch, but it had become something of a routine - Vanya would wander out into the kitchen, conveniently looking for a glass of water about the same time as Klaus started muttering in his sleep and threatening to wake himself up. She’d perch beside him, talk him out of whatever nightmare he was working himself into, and then, sometimes, she’d fall asleep against his side. They would then both spend the next day wincing and cracking their necks, but wouldn’t hesitate to do it again the next night.

Ben was more than a little jealous. 

Seeing their siblings again, having some semblance of a connection with them, was good. Ben didn’t have a real word of complaint, even. But, well. Being dead made it hard, sometimes, to watch whatever remained of his family come together again, knowing all the while that he wasn’t really a part of it. He had Klaus, of course, and that was something, but it wasn’t the same.

It was even more frustrating when the one connection he actually had to things, the only person who could hear him, chose to ignore him and his advice, even when it was _good_ advice. Ben thought he would have been used to it by now, having spent years having his complaints fall on deaf ears as Klaus continued to take whatever drugs came his way, regardless of the consequences. But at least then there weren’t other people involved, obliviously tiptoeing around issues, unable to hear Ben as he cajoled, threatened, and reasoned with a brick wall to actually communicate with their siblings.

Ben could understand why Klaus was reluctant to confide in their siblings, kind of, but the problem was that Klaus wasn’t even talking to _him_ about what had happened at the Academy. And they were past the days where Ben was content to roll his eyes at Klaus’s more stupid and self-destructive impulses, they had to be.

Things were different now, anyway. For once, Ben was reasonably certain at least one of their siblings would actually listen to Klaus, which was a nice little novelty, and he was equally sure it would help Klaus in the long run. 

He just had to convince Klaus of that.

(Because convincing Klaus to do anything for his own benefit was always so easy. Right.)

-

“Diego listened when you told him about the ghosts,” Ben input helpfully.

The only indication that Klaus heard him was an irritated, aborted twitch of his arm as if he wanted to send him a rude gesture or wave him away. He caught himself, remembering belatedly that he was, actually, trying to ignore Ben completely.

“You’re right,” Ben mused, nodding thoughtfully just to watch the way Klaus’s hackles rose. “Maybe not the best choice. He might go and do something stupid, like pay the Academy a visit.”

Ben was kind of hoping that would at least elicit more of a reaction, as the Academy tended to do, but Klaus seemed to have more thoroughly committed himself to the bit. He could try mentioning Dad, as that would probably get through, but that was a thorny subject at the best of times, and Ben didn’t want to start a real fight or upset Klaus properly.

“You alright, bro?” Diego asked carefully, further proving Ben’s point that things had changed and Klaus could share a few feelings without their siblings responding like sharks to blood in the water. Klaus knew it, too, if the stiff set of his shoulders was any indication.

“Fine,” Klaus said tightly. “Dandy, really. Just a bit of an audience.”

Diego sat back in Vanya’s armchair, casting a warning eye around the room as if he could see Ben or the silent woman in the corner. A useless gesture, but a sweet one at least, so Ben was willing to give him props for it. 

“Do you want to go out somewhere?” Diego asked, frowning. “My place, or a diner or something? Where did you say you used to go - uh, the library?”

Klaus shook his head, drawing himself up. “Nah,” he said, smiling thinly. “It’s still quieter here. Just have the one pain in my ass, what’s new? They’ll get the hint and shut up.”

Ben glowered at the side of his brother’s head. 

Diego hummed, looking unconvinced, but didn’t argue. “When’s Vanya coming back?” he asked instead, which was a bit of an awkward segue, but Number Two had never been known for his subtlety or patience.

Klaus blinked.

“Four,” Ben said, then hurriedly added “Four o’clock, Klaus,” when his brother winced. 

Klaus dutifully relayed the information in a strange voice, sinking back into the couch. Diego frowned harder.

Ben looked between them, watching the way Klaus squeezed his hands together as if trying to pin them down, the way Diego opened his mouth as if to say something, anything, only to close it again. Ben turned from one to the other, waiting, but neither of them broke.

“Seriously?” he said incredulously after a long moment. Klaus startled a little and turned a glare on him, which immediately put Diego on alert, and they were both so _stupid_. 

Klaus drew his shoulders together and shot Ben a warning look. “Diego, dear,” he said tightly. “Would you mind giving me a moment?”

Diego looked from Klaus to the empty space about a foot to Ben’s left, suspicious. It was obvious that leaving Klaus alone was the very last thing he wanted to do. Leaving Klaus alone for any reason was generally frowned upon these days, which Ben knew Klaus found simultaneously grating and comforting, depending on his mercurial moods. However, their siblings were also trying to actively listen to Klaus more, and Ben had overheard more than one conversation about ‘respecting boundaries’, which sounded like something Vanya must have picked up from her brief stint in therapy.

“Sure,” Diego finally agreed, slow and reluctant. “I’ll go grab us something to eat, yeah? Surprise Vanya when she gets back.”

Klaus smiled sunnily, almost entirely convincing. “Sounds wonderful,” he said. “Remember she’s allergic to - something.”

Diego rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “And you don’t like tomatoes. I got it.”

He took his time gathering his things, making a show of it, obviously waiting for Klaus to suddenly change his mind and demand he stay. But Klaus just watched him with calculated ease, carefully relaxed and stoically ignoring the movement of shadows. Ben could see the tightness in his eyes, but Diego either didn’t notice or decided there was nothing he could do about it.

Diego finally left with a firm reminder that he was only going to be a block away and would be back soon. Klaus waved him out the door.

Ben didn’t waste any time.

“I’m not going to let this go,” he said as soon as they were alone. 

“Ben,” Klaus said. “Light of my life, pain of my existence. Drop it. Please.”

Admittedly, the ‘please’ made him hesitate. Klaus and manners were acquaintances at best and outright adversaries at worst, and Ben still remembered Mom’s great despair and Dad’s irritation as they got older and Klaus’s vocabulary traded polite for vulgar. 

But, well, Klaus might have been the obstinate one of the family (a close six-way tie, perhaps), but Ben had had nothing but time to perfect his own stubbornness. 

“No,” he said, and only felt a little bad when Klaus so obviously slumped in his seat, pained. “Not unless you tell me why you won’t tell them about what happened at the Academy. Tell me.”

“Because I don’t want to!” Klaus burst, livelier than he’d been in a while. It was a pleasant surprise to see such fire in his eyes, even if it presented as an obstacle to Ben’s goals. “I want to forget it happened entirely. I’m never going back to the Academy, Dad’s never gonna make me train again, and for once in our miserable lives - no offence - things are actually, dare I say, _nice._ We got a good thing going here, Benny. Let’s just enjoy it while it lasts. Can we do that, please?”

Ben considered this for all of a minute. “That’s bullshit, Klaus.”

Klaus, frustrated, hit the arm of the couch with a closed fist. It was the closest he’d come to a proper tantrum in months, and it stirred the usual irritation in Ben’s chest.

“You’re still having nightmares,” he pressed on, not letting himself feel any sympathy that might hinder his argument. “You haven’t figured out how to handle the ghosts, not properly, and I know being with Dad was - not ideal.” He stumbled, unable to help it, not able to meet Klaus’s eyes. “I know. But - you have a chance here, Klaus. Do you have any idea of what I would do to be able to be with our siblings like this? Talk to them, spend time with them, an actual relationship? And you’re just throwing it away.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Klaus protested. “I’m still here, aren’t I? Still sober, fat lot of good that does me.”

“You’re lying to our siblings when they’re just trying to help you. You’re going to end up pushing them away again.”

Klaus yanked his knees to his chest, colour high on his cheeks. An argument probably wasn’t ideal and wasn’t what Ben had set out for, but he could still feel that damned little ball of anger in his chest, the one that had been growing ever since Klaus knocked on those Academy doors only to find Pogo rather than Luther on the other side. A small part of Ben whispered that it felt good to finally release it, even if it meant putting it on the shoulders of Klaus. This was normal, it was safe.

“What do you want me to do?” Klaus said pathetically instead of fighting back. This was less normal and entirely less safe. “Tell them about Dad’s training? Tell them I can do more with my powers, but don’t know how to control them?”

Yes, Ben thought. That’s exactly what you should tell them. But he didn’t say that out loud, because Klaus was sinking further into his seat, and he worried that those few words would be the final weights to drown him completely.

“I can’t,” Klaus said. “What if - they’d be right to, I know that, but - Ben, what if they try to ask me about my powers, what I can do? What if they want to see, or if Diego wants me to try to control them, like - Luther?”

 _Like Dad,_ he didn’t say and didn’t have to. Ben’s chest squeezed again, but not with anger. He was just tired.

“They wouldn’t, Klaus,” Ben said, hurt on their siblings’ behalf. “You know they wouldn’t.”

Klaus was silent for a beat too long. “Sometimes I still see them,” he said eventually to his knees. His fingers started twisting in the too-big sweater he was wearing, one of Diego’s that he’d poached a few weeks back. “Not them, but the other them. From the alley, that last trip. Angry and yelling. I look at Vanya and she’s smiling and everything’s fine, but then suddenly she’s dead and it’s my fault, and I can just hear them - ”

“It’s not real,” Ben said quietly. Klaus gave a half-hearted shrug of one shoulder in acknowledgement.

“I know,” he said. “But I still see it. And I’m trying so hard, Ben. To keep things in line, you know? I ignore the bad little ghosties, I focus on our siblings, on you, and try to pretend they aren’t there, and every day I hope that it’s enough. That my hands aren’t gonna turn blue and glowy in my sleep, that they won’t take me by surprise. What if telling Diego or Vanya about the Academy crosses the line? What if it breaks whatever lucky streak I’m having and the ghosts come back, become real? God, Ben, we’re in Vanya’s apartment!” Klaus’s breath hitched a little, panic trying to settle in his bones, and Ben automatically reached out a comforting hand to lay next to his brother’s. “If I fuck up and the ghosts come a-knockin’, it’ll just be me and Vanny, and if I can’t stop them, they’ll try to hurt me, hurt _Vanya_ , our goddamn sister, and she can’t - she isn’t - she won’t be able to stop them.”

“Klaus,” Ben said helplessly. “You don’t know that’ll happen.”

“Exactly! I don’t know anything! I don’t know how any of this works. Even Dad didn’t know, no matter how much he tried, how many stupid tests he ran. Things have been going well since I’ve been crashing at Vanya’s, and I can’t - If I keep ignoring it, maybe it will stay that way.”

This was flawed, stupid logic, and Ben knew that Klaus knew that. 

Klaus turned his head away, presumably to hide from Ben’s doubtless pitying expression. Ben took a moment to try and wrestle for a more neutral look, but it was hard when he couldn’t see his own face nor feel it in any real sense.

“If you were really afraid for Vanya,” he said slowly, trying to pick his words carefully. But it was always so hard to keep his cool around Klaus like this, when he was being so wilfully unaware, oblivious. “You would have left her apartment the morning after she found you, before she could have called Diego.”

Klaus looked like he wanted to argue, but kept his mouth shut. 

“Do you want to know what I think?” Ben asked.

“I never do,” Klaus said, but it lacked its usual bite.

“You’ve always been scared of your powers, always tried to hide from them. First you used the drugs, and now that they’ve stopped working, you’re using everything that’s happened with Luther’s training and Dad as more excuses to justify that fear. And it is justified,” Ben hastened to add. “I get it. I didn’t really understand when we were kids, how bad the ghosts are, but I do now, obviously. And the ghosts from the Academy - ” He paused, both for Klaus’s sake and his own. “I understand why you’re afraid. But you gotta get past it, Klaus, or it will never get better.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Klaus countered. “But maybe I can’t just ‘get past it’. Maybe it’ll never get better, no matter what I do, and I’ll always be a danger to Vanya and Diego and everyone fucking else until I - ” 

Klaus forcibly cut himself off with an audible snap of his teeth. Ben and Klaus looked at each other for a long, horribly quiet moment before Klaus squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. 

“Di will be back soon,” he said to the unreceptive couch cushions. 

“Good,” Ben said, because there was nothing else he could do. He was dead and entirely useless unless Klaus did the one thing he was clearly so terrified of doing. That helplessness was familiar, something that had been a suffocating truth for the past several years, but Ben felt it so much more acutely in the emptiness of Vanya’s apartment.

Ben hated when Diego and Vanya left Klaus alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm considering writing a small one-shot of what happened with Klaus at the Academy after Luther went to the moon, because initially I was just going to address it in this fic through conversations but decided that felt too hand-wavey? I guess we'll see lol


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it’s my birthday, and since I can’t exactly go out and celebrate this year, I decided to challenge myself to update all of my current fics. This was, perhaps, a mistake, and I’ve spent the past week cursing my life choices, but here we are. 
> 
> Also, this chapter came out significantly more introspection-heavy than anticipated, but I guess that fits the theme of the series. I just can't get out of the Hargreeves' heads.

If someone had told Klaus a year ago that he would inadvertently find himself the catalyst of an Umbrella Academy family reunion, he probably would have laughed himself sick and assumed it would be in the form of a funeral. He’d been told by multiple siblings, after all, that that was the path he was hurtling towards at breakneck speeds, and he had no reason to doubt Ben’s judgment.

Even then, Klaus would have doubted that something so measly as his entirely predictable death would actually bring the others together. Diego, maybe, but the rest? The girls, Luther? No way.

If someone had told Klaus that it wouldn’t be his death but rather his fragile (and reluctant) sobriety and fraying mental stability that would bring his siblings together, there wouldn’t have been enough evidence in the world to convince him, not even if Number Five himself had popped up out of the woodwork and sworn it to be true.

(In that vein, of course, Klaus could have pointed out that nothing would ever bring the whole force of the Academy together ever again, with Five lost and Ben stuck between worlds like a pinned butterfly, and no number of overdoses or morbid reunions would change that.)

The past several months, however, had shaken Klaus’s previously resolute understanding of life and his siblings.

Now, after becoming suddenly and painfully acquainted with sobriety for the first time in a decade and learning things about his powers that he’d rather had stayed a mystery, Klaus sometimes found himself doubting reality. Just a little. Just sometimes.

Not very often, of course. He wasn’t that far gone.

Just sometimes when he woke up in the middle of the night and found himself staring up at a familiar-unfamiliar ceiling, the ghosts a palpable and constant presence. Sometimes when he played dutiful (and grateful) audience to Vanya’s one-woman performances, his sister’s blanket in his lap and food in his belly. When Diego dragged him to dingy gyms and Klaus ended up cheering on Number Two for a fight inside of a boxing ring instead of the courtyard of the Academy or the cliché lair of some juvenile villain.

When, for example, Klaus blinked and somehow found himself in a lavish but tasteful house in the heat and glamour of LA, a painfully awkward and prickly sibling at each elbow.

It wasn’t that he’d never imagined it, seeing his siblings in a functional and, dare he say, civilized circumstance. He’d gotten a glimpse of it sometimes when Diego had been in a good enough mood and with enough tentative patience to take him to diners for a furtive meal. On the rare occasion they didn’t devolve into a fight, it had been nice, peaceful. Kind of like what Klaus pictured normal brothers were supposed to be like.

(Of course, he’d usually been either still rolling six ways to Sunday or crashing as hard as a comet, and Diego had still been strapped to the gills in leather and weaponry, but total normality was something little Four had stopped striving for long before he started trying to force the ghosts away.)

Klaus had even imagined seeing a shred of Allison’s life, though it wasn’t really something he’d let himself dwell on. When they’d been kids, old enough to dream about freedom but young enough to hold onto each other without claws, they’d mused about the life Allison had eventually achieved and Klaus had quickly given up on. Three would be the famous movie star with the adoring fans, and Four would be the fashionable accessory on her arm at premieres and red carpets. They’d go to parties and dress up in expensive clothes and Four would paint, maybe, or just be the pretty trophy wife at home.

After Allison left and Klaus started seeing her on billboards and posters, he firmly dropped all notion of that childish fantasy, and never let himself touch it again. LA was Allison’s like the streets and the clubs were Klaus’s, and it was a foundation of the universe that the lines between would never cross.

But Klaus wasn’t on the streets anymore (Vanya’s couch was his just as the beds at rehab had been his, entirely and temporarily and constantly) and he hadn’t so much as walked past a club since Vanya had drawn him in from the cold like a pathetic kitten. And Allison still belonged to LA, fully and naturally, but the distance wasn’t nearly as insurmountable as it had been.

So Klaus was in Los Angeles, with an actual, genuine invite, and with his sister more than happy to play tour guide. It felt both alien and familiar.

At least, he reflected with no small amount of amusement, he didn’t feel quite as unsettled and out of place as Vanya and Diego looked. He might sometimes feel a few steps too close to glitching out of whatever false reality he’d stumbled into, but he knew how to adjust, how to step into the nuance of a new environment, particularly one he’d helped imagine and cultivate with Allison those years ago.

Vanya still looked as surprised and uneasy as she had a few weeks ago when the invitation had been formally extended, like she thought maybe Allison had made some kind of mistake in including Vanya’s name in among the plane tickets. Klaus had tried to assure her that this was silly, since if their sister was willing to welcome the biggest flight risk of the family – officially he meant Diego, who had been so reluctant to give up his deadly security blanket that Klaus had seriously considered how they would ever afford bail; but, unofficially, he definitely meant himself, since he was relatively certain he was banned from more than one international airline, though he couldn’t remember which ones – then inviting Vanya, the sane and stable one, would be the easiest choice in the world. His attempt at comfort hadn’t seemed to ease the anxiety much, but Vanya had given him a quick but sincere smile afterwards, so it probably hadn’t been entirely the wrong thing to say.

Diego, on the other hand, looked like a disgruntled pelican, like the shape of him didn’t line up correctly with the space of the room no matter how much he paced and grumbled. He was far outside his usual habitat and didn’t even have his knives to protect him from all the dangers of toothy paparazzi and the truly impressive collection of baby photos adorning the walls. Klaus knew that Diego would never in a million years have accepted Allison’s invite except for the fact he had taken it upon himself to be Klaus’s ever-present guard dog and supervisor, and nothing Allison or Vanya could say about their own presence and competence had been enough to persuade Diego that letting Klaus out of his sight – and, worse, out of his city – without him would be anything less than a disaster.

(Privately, Klaus couldn’t blame him. _He_ knew he had Ben by his side to watch his every move like a hawk and make sure he stayed on the straight and narrow (and sane), but it wasn’t like the others had that assurance. As far as Diego knew, he’d lost track of Klaus once since dragging him into sobriety and Klaus had come out the other side the worse off for it.)

Speaking of Ben, he seemed as happy as a clam to be given this opening into Allison’s life, and all the more enthralled because Allison was the one sibling he’d never been able to spy on when Klaus was otherwise occupied. She was the biggest and most enticing mystery, and Klaus knew that Ben had been wanting this chance for years, particularly once they’d heard about Claire.

Seeing Ben happy was – good, obviously. Klaus was a big fan. But it also lodged something uneasy in his gut, something twisted that weighed heavy and low. It was a feeling that had been growing for a while now, though Klaus hadn’t really acknowledged it at first, too busy in the ghosts and the noise and the nightmares, Luther leaving for the moon, knocking on the Academy doors, trying to make his head stop spinning long enough to recognize Vanya and see through all the dead.

Now that things had – miraculously – settled into some semblance of calm, and without any substantial hobbies to distract him from the torture of sobriety and boredom, Klaus had been forced into reluctant self-awareness and introspection. In doing so, he had first become aware of the sinking feeling he sometimes got when he woke up to find Ben perched patiently, faithfully, on Vanya’s windowsill, or when Ben sat just off to the side, reading that stupid book of his and occasionally pitching in when Klaus lost himself in the middle of conversation with one of their (living) siblings.

It had been worse lately, since Ben had started pushing for Klaus to open up to the others. Part of it was that Klaus didn’t appreciate the nagging, but that wasn’t anything new in their dynamic. He also didn’t love the idea of Ben being – upset? Angry with him? Which was equally as familiar, since Klaus had been proudly wearing Ben’s disapproval like a badge for years.

Initially, Klaus had been willing to write it off as indigestion and leave it at that, but he’d forgotten that most of his treasured avoidance strategies were far more successful with drugs, and now without them, he lacked successful alternatives.

(In his defence, he hadn’t exactly planned on needing a long-term strategy. The drugs were supposed to be it, the de facto solution to all his ghostly woes. He hadn’t exactly sketched out a life map back when he was fifteen and first coming to terms with the emerging reality of his addictions, but he’d always known, deep down, that there would be no coming back from the drugs.)

(Figured that the universe had other plans, seemingly designed specifically to screw him over the most. In his darker moments, Klaus couldn’t help but be bitter over the fact that he’d been unceremoniously yanked back from the edge of fatal overdoses so many times – without his being consulted on the matter, thank you very much – all so that his shitty life of shitty circumstances and even shittier choices could culminate in the worst bit of karma and punishment.)

So Ben was happy to see Allison and Klaus was uneasy and Vanya and Diego were miserable and out of place. They were, probably, the saddest little ragtag team of dysfunctional adults to grace (darken?) Allison’s meticulously polished doorway.

She still welcomed them with open arms.

-

Klaus figured it out the first time they met Claire.

Watching Vanya tentatively extend a hand to the tiny human in Allison’s arms, Klaus – hanging back with Diego, the both of them practically pasted against the wall, as far away as possible – turned to Ben. It was his natural response at this point when in uncharted territory that he felt too socially inept and/or abrasive to handle on his own.

Ben was staring at Claire and Allison with – well, with a lot of things, but the thing that caught Klaus’s attention was the longing.

In retrospect, Klaus should have recognized the rock in his gut a lot earlier. After all, despite not letting himself dwell on it too much over the years, guilt had always been a familiar feeling for Klaus, always there, a mire just below the surface.

Ben wanted desperately what Klaus had spent most of his adult life pushing away. This wasn’t new knowledge, just as the guilt was old hat, but it was different, before. Before, when they hardly ever saw their siblings. Before, when Ben couldn’t interact with them but at least he wasn’t forced to see exactly what he was missing.

Klaus’s relationship with Ben was – contentious. Volatile. Complicated.

Death hadn’t exactly done them any favours, and admittedly Klaus himself had kind of wrought the rest of the damage that had twisted their relationship into the knotted and thorny thing it was now, but it hadn’t always been like that.

Six and Four had been relatively close as child soldiers, passably friendly as teenagers, and now hovered indecisively between moral adversaries and disturbingly codependent allies.

Klaus was relatively certain that, at least on some level, Ben resented him. If he was being entirely honest – which, as a general rule, he usually wasn’t – Klaus wasn’t exactly Ben’s biggest fan either. They’d spent too long together, too tied up in one another, in too close quarters for too many years and too many iffy life choices.

But Ben knew him better than anyone, living or dead. And Klaus was pretty sure he could say the same for Ben. They still _cared_ , even if they sometimes didn’t want to, and that was why Klaus hated the look on Ben’s face as Allison turned towards them and rolled her eyes, baby in tow.

“Klaus,” she said, smiling teasingly. “Come say hi to your niece.”

Klaus carefully did not look at Ben as he obeyed.

-

“It’s okay, Klaus,” Ben said quietly, encouragingly. “Breathe.”

Klaus nodded jerkily, but it took him a moment to actually listen to the perfectly sound advice. His throat felt tight, closed off, and he had to actively remind himself how to get air into his lungs. It wasn’t a panic attack, not like the ones he’d had in the past, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable.

“You’re doing the right thing,” Ben assured.

On the one hand, the tone, if nothing else, did go a long way to distracting Klaus enough to pull him out of the threatening spiral of his thoughts. However, on the other hand, this was firmly Nice Ben territory, and while Klaus had had to learn to appreciate Nice Ben more over the past several months, he still wasn’t sure what to do with him, particularly in this case, when he absolutely did not deserve it. Not only had he misled Ben about what he intended to do, but he was merely fixing something he could have fixed a long time ago.

All his siblings were present and accounted for (well, most of them. Luther still hung over them like a shadow, further away than any ghost, and Five – ), mostly patiently waiting for him to get his shit together and tell them why he’d insisted on a family meeting.

(Well, family meeting was a bit strong. He’d just caught them at the tail end of dinner, managing to catch Diego before he slunk off to hole up in the guest room Allison had set aside for him. He’d told them he needed to tell them something and then promptly closed off to have a very minor internal panic, which, in retrospect, probably made the whole thing far more dramatic than it needed to be. Diego was starting to get restless, and Vanya concerned.)

(Thankfully, Allison had quietly murmured something to Patrick to get him to leave them be for the evening, so at least Klaus was only making a fool of himself in front of his siblings, which would have bothered him more a year ago, before the three of them had seen him in much more emotionally compromised states.)

“I know,” he told Ben, fidgeting in his seat.

Ben actually _smiled_ at him for Christ’s sake, which definitely wasn’t what he wanted. The sinking feeling in his gut was at full-force, making him vaguely nauseous, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that he was technically lying to Ben through omission. He was pretty sure he’d be forgiven – assuming it worked out – but he was also just as sure that it was the act and not the results that mattered when it came to these things.

Because Ben thought Klaus was going to tell the others about those missing weeks, that blank spot in their timeline that so far Klaus had patently refused to tell them about. Ben thought Klaus had finally seen reason and decided to go ahead and spill the beans about his powers and Dad and how he’d been back at the Academy, alone, for weeks.

But that wasn’t Klaus’s plan. He still couldn’t imagine telling them, couldn’t even begin to picture the words before the room got way too warm and the air got sucked out and the ghosts could always sense it, could always tell when he got too close and maybe, maybe he’d make them real again, maybe he’d slip up and they’d tear him apart, tear the others apart –

So, no, Klaus was not going to tell them about any of that.

“This would be so much easier with E,” he muttered lowly, just this side of a whine. Ben frowned at him.

“What ghost are you talking to now?” Allison asked, a little teasing. She was tense, though, and Diego was practically in knots he was so worked up. They still didn’t get it, really, about the ghosts, but they knew enough.

Klaus straightened his shoulders, took a breath. Squeezed his hands together, feeling the bite of his nails on the skin.

(Ben frowned harder.)

“Ben,” Klaus said.

Ben startled a little, looking up. But Klaus wasn’t talking to him. He met Allison’s eyes steadily, even if it made the distorted, distant screaming in his ear louder.

“I’m talking to Ben.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been feeling insecure in my writing lately, particularly with this series, and that kept me from being able to work on this for a while. But I’ve still been getting lovely comments on all the fics, and they really made me feel better and eventually helped me get this out, so thank you to everyone who’s left a comment, you’re too kind <3


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